


maybe i dreamt you

by renaissance



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Dreams, Getting Together, Latin, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-05
Updated: 2016-04-05
Packaged: 2018-05-31 10:53:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 17,847
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6467419
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/renaissance/pseuds/renaissance
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p></p><blockquote>
  <p>Adam seldom dreamt of other people. His dreams were nebulous, winding, leaving him with abstract impressions. But there was Ronan, solid as flesh—and from there, the dream left Adam with the echo of a feeling.</p>
  <p>It was one hell of a feeling, though.</p>
</blockquote>
            </blockquote>





	maybe i dreamt you

**Author's Note:**

> In the brief window of time that I have between reading the Raven Cycle as it stands and the final book's release, I've done the only sensible thing and written speculative post-BLLB getting together fic. It got a little out of hand.
> 
> Thanks to Jo for beta reading and in general providing incredibly helpful suggestions as I adjusted to writing for a new fandom, and to my enabler-in-chief Vee for the discussions that led to this fic being written and actually having a plot.

Adam Parrish woke up.

He felt like all he’d been doing lately was waking up. It was since the ley line had awoken something in him, and since Persephone had showed him how to control it— _Persephone_ , who he had not thought about in however many days, and whose memory struck him now in the most inconvenient of moments, as he sat propped up on his elbows, eyes wide, breath coming uneven and hot from his chest, leaving small clouds hanging in the chilly winter air.

He had been dreaming.

Often, he never remembered his dreams. Other times, they were dreams made real, visions merging their edges with reality—Cabeswater, trying to send him a message. This was not one of those dreams, although he had been at the forest’s boundary. For a moment he’d felt lost, but then it had settled that he was exactly where he needed to be. The feeling was comforting; he remembered little else from the beginning of the dream other than that security.

Adam seldom dreamt of other people. His dreams were nebulous, winding, leaving him with abstract impressions. But there was Ronan, solid as flesh—and from there, the dream left Adam with the echo of a feeling.

It was one hell of a feeling, though.

In fact, if Adam had been more crude, less Aglionby by design, he might have called the dream something a little different. There was no mistaking the reason he was breathing so messily, why his face felt so warm around the edges.

He and Ronan both dealt in magic, and with Cabeswater. Ronan was the forest’s right hand—strong, uncompromising. Vicious when it needed to be. _Hoc tamen infelix miseram solabere mortem: Aeneae magni dextra cadis_ —they had studied the Aeneid with Whelk. Adam didn’t remember when he’d last thought of that name. He was surprised he remembered the phrase; but then, they had spent so long analysing it, an example of epithets and significant word order and a classic ascending sentence structure.

“Let this, however, give you comfort in your miserable death, unlucky one,” Adam said to the darkness of his bedroom, “you have died by the right hand of mighty Aeneas.”

Most people in their Latin class just memorised a translation for their seen passages in exams. Not Ronan. Ronan spoke fluently, learnt the language with an intimidating precision. He read every word anew each time he saw it. Adam envied that ease.

And what did Cabeswater leave for Adam? Its eyes, and its left hand.

 _Sinister_.

You didn’t need a Latin dictionary to know what that meant.

It wasn’t even light outside yet. Maybe somewhere in the distance, the sun was rising yellow over the blue-tinged mountains, but from the small, high window, the only one in Adam’s attic room, he wouldn’t be able to see it yet. It would almost be better if there were the warming rays of dawn scattered across the ancient floorboards, like the light of heaven in a dusty oil painting. Something about this moment, this confusion of emotions, in the attic of a church, felt distinctly unholy.

“Shut up,” Adam told himself, shifting so he was sitting. “You’re supposed to be an atheist.”

Except, it was difficult to know what to believe when you were surrounded by magic and mysticism and stupid Catholic Ronan and his stupid wicked smile that didn’t ask, but demanded of you, _Believe what_ I _believe_.

Adam believed that Ronan could dream of what he wanted, and bring things from his dreams into electrifying, startling life. Was _that_ what had happened? It didn’t feel like it. Adam wasn’t one of Ronan’s dream things, a creature to be manipulated and bound to his own consciousness. Adam had been very much himself in that dream, even if it had left him with only a fleeting physicality.

No, the more he thought about it, the more it could have absolutely nothing to do with Ronan: Adam, of his own doing, had dreamt of fucking Ronan. Fucking _fucking_ Ronan Lynch.

He stared down at his hands, as though reading his own palm might be able to give him the answer. What did it _mean_?

Getting up, he started shifting around the room, pretending to put things in his messenger bag for school even though he always packed the night before. He waited for the sun to show itself. He could barely see his watch in the darkness, but it wasn’t seven yet. And he wasn’t stupid, he reminded himself. He _knew_ that Ronan had a crush on him, saw it in the moment between when he entered a room and Ronan noticed. Maybe that awareness had fed back into Adam’s subconscious, making him hyperaware of Ronan’s feelings and translating that, somehow, into something alarmingly physical.

Yeah. That would be it.

The worst part, though, was that Adam still had those abstractions, half-formed ideas of intimacy, hanging around his head as he drove to school. Ronan was even there in the Hondayota, the name he’d given Adam’s patchwork monstrosity of a car. Actually, Adam had become very fond of the car. And the name.

They had Latin first period. Adam was on edge as he walked through the school gates. Their textbook said Horace’s odes, but his heart said Catullus 99. _Numquam iam posthac basia surripiam_ , Adam promised himself. _Now after this, I’ll never steal another kiss._

At the back of the classroom, there was Gansey, on time for once. He looked a little wild this morning, like he’d been up late but refused to compromise his attendance, overcompensating on punctuality. Still, he greeted Adam with the sort of grin that meant he was doing his best to be positive, honestly.

“Morning,” Adam said. He took the seat beside Gansey. He thought about where Ronan would sit.

“Wow,” Gansey said, “you look wrecked.”

“Thanks,” Adam said wryly. “I’ve been awake since god knows when.”

Gansey just nodded. They all understood each other, these days.

Lifting the flap of his messenger bag, Adam went through the start-of-class ritual, fishing for his stray pens and pencils, only lying loose because he didn’t want to be seen keeping them together with a rubber band, then his notebook, then his textbook—only, his textbook wasn’t there. After all that fastidious packing, he’d gone and forgotten it.

“Typical,” he muttered.

“No textbook?” Gansey guessed. For someone with not a trace of psychic ability, Gansey was remarkably alert to these things. “You can probably borrow Ronan’s. It’s not like he ever uses it.”

“It’s fine,” Adam said. “I’ll run to the library, see if they have a spare copy.”

Gansey smiled. “I’m sure they will.”

Sometimes, Adam looked at his feet when he walked. He didn’t mean to. He just didn’t want to lose his way, or draw anyone’s attention, or whatever deep-seated psychological issue he could come up with to justify it to himself. Usually, he had enough sense to keep clear of any obstacles despite it. This time, though, he walked straight into someone.

Fucking _Ronan Lynch_.

Adam fully expected a “Watch where you’re going,” or some similarly brash, classically Ronan act of reflexive aggression. Instead, Ronan made a sound somewhere between Chainsaw and a chainsaw, high-pitched and defensive.

“Watch where you’re going,” Adam said.

“Hah,” Ronan grunted, collecting himself. “Good morning to you too.”

“Morning,” Adam said, rolling his eyes. He almost put a hand to Ronan’s arm to push him aside—almost, but not quite. “Now get out of my way. I need to get to the library.”

Ronan frowned. His frowns were always a little disconcerting, because if Ronan wasn’t bothering to act like he understood every machination of the universe, there was something wrong. Adam noticed that Ronan had brought a bag to class, for the first time in too long.

“This is weird,” Ronan said, “but did you forget your textbook?”

That was _weird_.

“I,” Adam began. “Yeah?”

“Okay,” Ronan said. He was still frowning. “I dreamt an extra copy this morning.”

Adam felt the words _this morning_ crashing into him, a mix of relief and anxiety. If Ronan had been dreaming about Latin textbooks this morning, then there was no way he could’ve invaded Adam’s dreams with that _thing_ that happened. Of course, this also meant that the dream was entirely Adam’s doing. He didn’t like that. He didn’t _think_ Ronan’s crush was reciprocal. But there was the evidence.

“I suppose I should be thanking you,” Adam mused.

“You can tell me to fuck off,” Ronan said. “I don’t give a shit if you don’t want my charity. It’s there or it’s not.”

“You’re thinking too hard about this,” Adam said. “It’s just a textbook.”

Turning on his heel and heading back to his desk, Adam felt Ronan’s eyes on the back of his head as he followed. Ronan took the desk in front of Gansey, barely looking at Adam as he handed across the textbook.

“You see,” Gansey said, “these things have a way of sorting themselves out.”

When Adam flicked the book open, though, it was abundantly clear that this was _not_ a collection and analysis of Horace’s odes. Instead, the content must have been lifted from the Catullus textbook they’d found in the library two Summers ago, turning ahead to the filthy ones and laughing behind their hands, sequestered in amongst the stacks. A few pages in, and Adam realised that every third or fourth poem was Catullus 16, the one with the filthiest possible verbs, the words that suited Ronan the most. In fact, it seemed that most of the poems Ronan’s dream had selected were the sordid, scandalous ones.

And then, five times in a row, there was Catullus 99. The one about the male lovers.

Adam wondered if Ronan knew.

 

* * *

 

Ronan had two dreams that morning.

The second was a dream he was used to. He was washed ashore to the forest’s edge, and the Orphan Girl sat there expectantly, waiting to lead him. He did not have to walk long before an old, hardback book made its weight known in the crook of his arm. He was carrying it like it had been there all along. Somehow, he knew it was for Adam.

“ _Non in misericordia_ ,” the Orphan Girl said. _Not out of pity_.

“ _Scio_ ,” Ronan replied. Because he _did_ know, that even if the book was for Adam, there was always the chance Adam wouldn’t take it.

Then, he woke up, still cradling the book under his arm. He took a look at the cover— _The Collected Odes: An Analysis_. First period Latin. He put the book into his bag—fuck, when was the last time he’d taken _that_ to school?—alongside his own textbook. Couldn’t hurt to be prepared.

And like a dream, when he got into class, there was Adam, minus one textbook.

All through the lesson, Ronan made a point of staring straight at the blackboard. Fucking Adam was so distracting, the way he tapped his pen against his nose when he was thinking and the way his eyebrows drew together when he read through the textbook Ronan had dreamt him. Really, it was lucky that Ronan had honed to perfection the art of _not_ looking.

Maybe Ronan would never look at Adam again. Yeah. That seemed like a sensible course of action. What did Ronan gain by looking at Adam, anyway? Fucking nothing. Except a crawling sensation on his skin like he was suddenly superfluous, and a waste of his goddamn time.

So he kept his eyes on the blackboard, and nowhere else.

This was all Adam’s fault—the stupid textbook and the way Ronan couldn’t bear to look at him and _that dream_.

Ronan’s first dream was not of the sort that had happened before. Which was a surprise to him, because he hadn’t noticed the lack of sex dreams in his life until he _had_ one. From what he gathered, teenage boys were _supposed_ to have that sort of dream all the time—but then, Ronan had never dreamt the same way as other people. His dreams had been sensual before, but never so unambiguously about _sex_ and nothing else. The realisation pissed him off, and yeah, he was an idiot to take it out on Adam, because God knows it wasn’t _his_ fault that Ronan found him to be the most unbelievably attractive person on the surface of the Earth, but he needed to do _something_ with his frustration.

Other than jerk it out. Which he had also done. And promptly gone back to sleep and dreamt of forests and textbooks. And then of course he’d slept in, because he hadn’t fallen asleep until four anyway, and of course he was nearly late for Latin, the one class he never missed.

And the day had only just begun.

Ronan ran through the options for when class finished. One, he could run. Not even to his next class—just, somewhere else, to cool down for a bit. Would they notice he was missing? Two, he could run. To his next class, and sit with his back to Adam again, and let Gansey pick up that he was acting strange—yeah, better not. Three, he could stay fucking put.

Class dismissed.

“Hey,” Adam said, before Ronan could do anything, “is it alright if I keep this?”

He had both his hands on the textbook. “Go ahead,” Ronan said. “What do I care?”

Adam smiled, because he knew and Ronan knew that Ronan cared.

So Ronan took option three and sucked it up. He continued sucking it up until lunch, when he couldn’t bear it anymore, and ditched.

(Gansey was looking at him funny. Adam wasn’t looking at him at all. Part of it was probably in Ronan’s mind— _probably_ —because he felt like Adam could see it on him, sense his guilt. He needed to say a Hail Mary or ten.)

“Get the fuck over it,” he told himself, turning the key in the BMW. He needed to be very far from everything. He drove around Henrietta, streets he knew well and familiar sights that sped past his windows, letting them buzz in his ears like white noise. It wasn’t very comforting, but then, not much was.

Halfway down a street with a general store and not much else, Ronan heard a voice from the passenger seat.

“You should try talking to him about it, you know.”

Ronan slammed the horn. There were no other cars on the road, but it felt good to let it out. “Noah, you shitlord,” he said. “Don’t _do_ that.”

“Sorry,” Noah said, not sounding sorry in the least. “Eyes on the road. It’s been a long time since I drove a car.”

“Seven years, maybe?” Ronan suggested. He knew he sounded a little spiteful. He also knew Noah could take it.

“Something like that,” Noah said. “You should talk to Adam, though.”

Ronan narrowed his eyes, turning a sharp corner. “What the hell would that accomplish?”

Noah sighed. “You might be surprised.”

Sometimes, Noah’s _I know you better than you know yourself_ schtick was cute. Right now, it was just pissing Ronan off. He took another hard left.

“Do you know where we’re going?” Noah asked, fiddling with the seatbelt strap.

“What do you fucking think?”

“I wonder,” Noah said. Then, suddenly, “Pull over.”

Ronan did as he was told. They were outside a school, and the gates had just opened, students streaming out onto the street. Aglionby would just have let out too. Ronan almost felt bad for skipping. Almost. This school was about as far as you could get from Aglionby. At least he had that to distract him.

“Ooh, here we go,” Noah said, fading for a second and reappearing in the backseat. “Wind down your passenger side window.”

Again, Ronan didn’t question it. A second later, Noah’s weird prescience was rewarded with Blue Sargent, leaning through the window and resting her head on her folded arms.

“Hey, looks like I’ve got a personal driver today,” she said. “Nice.”

“What the fuck, Noah,” Ronan said.

“Hey,” Blue said again, “are you going to unlock the door or do I have to climb in through the window?”

“You have to climb,” Ronan said, as Noah leaned forward to press the unlock button between the front seats.

Blue got in and dumped her bag at her feet. “So what’s the deal?”

“With me being here?” Ronan rolled his eyes. “I was just driving. Noah told me to stop.”

Turning around, Blue shot Noah a grin. “Can you give me a lift home, then? I was going to text Gansey to bring everyone around, anyway.”

Ronan brought the car back to life and pulled back onto the road.

“Any occasion?” Noah asked.

“Not really,” Blue said. “Dinner. Something. Pretending everything is normal.”

Ronan groaned.

“Maybe you can talk some sense into him,” Noah said. “He’s been sulking all day.”

“What the _fuck_ , Noah—”

“What about?” Blue asked. Her voice was suddenly a little more serious. Ronan hated that she cared about him. It was so much easier when they just pissed each other off.

Noah cleared his throat. “Ronan is sulking because—”

“Noah, I swear to God—”

“—he is experiencing some _emotions_ , and doesn’t really have the capacity to deal with them.”

“Interesting,” Blue said. “Could it be possible that Ronan Lynch is _human_?”

“Well, it’s something we’ve all wondered from time to time,” Noah said.

While they fashioned him into a joke, precision-detailed around the edges, Ronan kept his eyes on the road. For all his speeding and racing, he was a fundamentally good driver. Or maybe he was only a good driver when his passengers were shittalking him. Either way.

“And dare we ask,” Blue said, under her breath, “ _what_ these emotions are?”

In his rearview mirror, Ronan caught Noah making an obscene gesture with the _okay_ sign on one hand and an extended index finger on the other. Blue muffled a giggle with the back of her hand. Noah kept his finger hooked through the _okay_ loop, only just cracking a smile.

“Classy,” Ronan muttered.

“Like you,” Noah agreed. He looked way too smug for someone with literally no corporeal presence.

Blue’s laughter stuttered to silence. She leant back on the headrest, looking at the ceiling of the car for a few moments. “Ah,” she breathed. “ _Romance_.”

“Fuck off,” Ronan said.

“Help me convince him to talk it out,” Noah said. “I think he refuses to take my advice because I’m dead.”

“He won’t take _my_ advice,” Blue said, “since I’m a _girl_.”

Ronan twisted his grip on the wheel. “Would you two just—”

“Well, I can’t ask Gansey about it,” Noah said, “because he’s physically incapable of keeping a secret. And I _definitely_ can’t ask Adam.”

“Why can’t you—” Blue began.

Ronan pulled into the drive of 300 Fox Way with a screech of his tyres.

“ _Oh_ ,” Blue said.

The three of them sat in silence for a moment, like a mutual shellshock. Ronan didn’t know what to say. He didn’t _want_ to know what to say because he didn’t want to be in this fucking situation at all. He just wanted to go back to fucking bed.

Or, no—then he’d dream again.

“Yeah, so,” Noah said, hesitant, “like I said. They should talk it out, right?”

“Definitely, absolutely,” Blue said quickly. “Talk it out. Yeah.”

Ronan was about to slam his door shut and get out—and dump his car at 300 Fox Way forever for all he fucking cared; he could walk home—when he heard the threatening rumbling of the Pig.

“Oh, you’ve got to be shitting me.”

Gansey pulled up, Adam in tow. Blue and Noah got out of the BMW to greet them—well, Blue got out. Noah rematerialised in front of them. Ronan sat stock still, clenching his knuckles so tight the wheel felt like it ought to have broken.

He was _fucked_.

 

* * *

 

“Ronan’s disappeared.” Gansey flopped down on the bench beside Adam, phone pressed to his ear. “No, I wasn’t talking— _yes_ , Helen, I’m still—I was talking to Adam—”

Adam waved a hand, smiling to say, _Take your time_. He still had a half-assed homemade lunch to finish, and it was easy to sit in silence in one of Aglionby’s leafy courtyards.

“Al _right_ , Helen,” Gansey said. “I’ll talk to you later.”

Gansey hung up. Adam let him pause to reorient himself, watched him sigh at his phone screen.

“Sorry about that.”

“It’s okay,” Adam said. “What was that about Ronan?” He twisted the sleeve of his sweater. Saying Ronan’s name aloud felt weird, almost taboo after his dream that morning.

“He’s ditched us!” Gansey said. Melodrama was never his strong suit, but he made it clear when he was worried. “And he’d been doing so well coming to class lately.”

Even though it was impossible to know, Adam couldn’t shake the feeling that it was because of him. That Ronan was _avoiding_ him. A year ago, he might’ve said that there was no way Ronan could know if someone had dreamt about him. Now—Adam wasn’t sure.

What he said was, “No great loss.”

If Richard Gansey III was capable of something so inelegant as snorting, the sound he made then was the closest he’d ever get. “Oh, come on.”

“I’m serious,” Adam said, trying for a _serious_ expression. “If he wants to fail it’s his own problem.”

“That’s not entirely what I meant,” Gansey said. “I know he won’t fail. He’s been studying, you know? Actually _studying_.”

“Then what did you mean?” Adam asked.

“Oh,” Gansey said, his mouth twisting with something like concern. “Well, you two have been spending a lot of time together lately. No need to act like you don’t miss his company.”

Adam nearly choked on his sandwich. “ _Gansey_ ,” he said, gasping his name like a drowning breath. “It’s not like that.”

“Not like— _oh_ , that’s not what I meant!” Gansey said, putting his hands out defensively in front of him. “I’m just glad you guys are proper friends now. You know, none of that constant arguing that there used to be.”

“We still argue,” Adam said. “All the time.”

“Ah, you make a weak case,” Gansey said. “You just don’t want to admit that you don’t mind him anymore.”

“I never minded him,” Adam said, although he knows it’s a pitiful protest.

Gansey shrugged, and let the topic drop. Adam was grateful for that—grateful for Gansey recognising his limits, for once. Gansey could be tactless, but he was essentially a good friend. A good, observant friend who seemed to have picked up on Ronan finding any excuse to spend time with Adam, and the way Adam had started testing that, fishing for reasons to spend time with Ronan, even if it meant gruesome blackmail. Maybe he had pushed the boat a little too far into choppy waters, but he was curious about the extent of Ronan’s—what, feelings? Attraction?

He thought about how much he’d wanted other people to notice Ronan’s _crush_ on him. He wondered if Gansey knew.

But it didn’t come up again for the rest of the afternoon, and they passed time in and around class until Gansey got a text from Blue, summoning them to 300 Fox Way that evening. Adam parked the Hondayota back at St. Agnes and accepted a lift with Gansey to save them both the trouble of driving.

Adam wondered if he wanted people to notice Ronan’s crush on him because _he_ noticed that sort of thing so keenly. He noticed in the way Gansey impatiently drummed his fingers on the steering wheel, the way his face lit up when he talked about their destination. Gansey _liked_ Blue, and she probably liked him, and Adam didn’t care. The relief of not caring was unlike anything he’d ever felt.

They pulled into the drive just behind Ronan’s BMW, and watched as Blue and Noah got out. Ronan stayed put.

 _This is my fault_ , Adam thought reflexively. He had to remind himself, there was no _way_ Ronan could know.

But there was something in what Gansey had said—he cared a little more about Ronan than he might have once. So he showed it in the only way Ronan would understand. Standing by the driver's side, he kicked the door of the BMW.

“Hey. You coming?”

The window was down a bit, but not enough for Adam to catch Ronan’s expression as he said, “What the fuck ever, Parrish.”

“That’s more like it,” Adam said. What did it say about him that he couldn’t stand the thought of going inside the house without Ronan by his side?

He stepped out of the way as Ronan got out and slammed the door behind him. He hadn’t been in one of these moods for a while. _It’s not my fault, it’s not my fault_ , thought Adam.

Pushing that to the back of his mind, he followed the others into 300 Fox Way, only tailed by Ronan. _Ronan_. Adam could sense Ronan looking at him. Despite himself, his chest swelled with the attention, and he stood a little taller.

Dinner at 300 Fox Way was always an event, but things had become subdued after Persephone had… after Persephone. Adam never tried to be anything other than subdued, though, so in many ways it suited him. He could switch off that part of him—the one he wasn’t proud of—and focus on being a wallflower. It took more effort than it seemed, extracting yourself from conversation and placing yourself at the periphery. He liked the challenge.

Then, there was Ronan. Ronan was a challenge too—Adam wondered if that was why he continually subjected himself to Ronan’s bullshit. Or perhaps he was being too harsh. He remembered the way Ronan had picked up that mouse at the Barns, handled it like it came with a warning label: _FRAGILE_. That was how people saw Adam. And did he want Ronan to treat him like that? Or did he like Ronan because he’d never treated Adam like he was any different?

Did he _like_ Ronan?

He didn’t have much time to test the theory—there was only one moment that evening when he and Ronan were alone, together, and it dissipated quickly like a ripple in a stream, a conversation so insubstantial that Adam was barely sure it happened at all. But even that moment, even that fleeting connection, was enough for the feeling to return.

Gansey was right. They _had_ been spending a lot of time together. More than just partners in crime, maybe more than friends. The realisation jolted Adam from whatever curious stasis of inaction he’d been in. But what could he do about it? There was nothing, no move he could make that would push his relationship with Ronan into the realms of _more_. Adam didn’t even know if that was what he wanted. Not quite.

The evening drew to a shuddering close, ending the way you finish the first chapter of a novel or the first course of an expensive meal. It was good—normal was good—but Adam wanted _more_.

And what else did he want _more_ of?

They migrated out to the front of 300 Fox Way, a crowd of people who didn’t want to be parted.

“I’ll see you back at Monmouth,” Gansey said, waving to Ronan. “I’m just dropping Adam home first.”

How weird it sounded when he called the St. Agnes apartment _home_.

Ronan flipped Gansey off and got into his BMW, Noah waiting in the passenger seat. At least he had someone keeping him company.

For the first few minutes, Adam and Gansey drove in silence. Gansey’s silence was more of a concession, like he knew that Adam had something to say and was going to give him as much time as he needed before he was ready to say it.

So Adam said it. “You know Ronan likes me, right?”

“I thought we had this discussion,” Gansey said. “You guys are proper friends now.”

“Um.” Adam cleared his throat. “No, I mean. He _likes_ me.”

To Gansey’s credit, he didn’t seem too shaken by this. “Did he tell you that?”

Adam rolled his eyes. “It’s obvious.”

“I had wondered,” Gansey said. “He was the one who fixed your rent, wasn’t he?”

“Yeah,” Adam said. He didn’t like the way Gansey said _fixed_ , but that was Gansey for you—unaware but well-meaning.

“So do you _like_ him?”

“I’m not sure I can answer that question,” Adam said. “I thought I didn’t.”

Gansey’s lips twitched with a held-back smile. “What changed?”

“You sure are asking me a lot of questions,” Adam said.

“Sorry, sorry,” Gansey said. “Think of me like your meddling aunt. We’re talking about the possibility of two of my best friends getting together here. I’m invested!”

Adam wasn’t quite rude enough to point out that he’d never had a meddling aunt figure in his life—that might have been one luxury too far. “Right, of course,” he said. “Blue and Noah.”

“Hey!” Gansey grimaced, but he wasn’t too offended to laugh.

“If I’m being serious,” Adam said, “what changed is that I started thinking too much about it. Now I’m not sure where I stand.”

Gansey didn’t reply, pensive, eyes turned away from Adam and focused towards the dark distance of Henrietta’s streets at night.

“That, and,” Adam continued, breathing deeply, “I had this _dream_ about him.”

 

* * *

 

 _Sulking_ , Noah had called it. Ronan called it fucking _self-preservation_. The kitchen at 300 Fox Way was like a bus terminus, the floor vibrating with the steps of people coming in and going out and shouting and whispering and everything in between. They didn’t need Ronan’s help and he _definitely_ didn’t need them.

He found himself gravitating to the reading room. The first time they’d been in there, he’d steadfastly refused a reading. Although he stood by that, sometimes a sort of morbid curiosity tugged on him, drawing him towards a spirituality so far removed from his own. He didn’t like that feeling. He hovered in the room for a second before withdrawing, resting his head against the wall of the corridor so that he could pretend he didn’t hear footsteps—Adam’s—drawing towards him.

“Don’t tell me you’re loitering for a reading.”

That’s right—Ronan forgot that Adam could do readings now. Like somehow, perversely, he was taking Persephone’s place. Ronan could think of little worse. “You wish,” he said.

Adam pulled a face. “I don’t want to do a reading for you. Who knows what I might find in your brain?”

“Just how much I hate you,” Ronan said, because he meant, _You would find out that I dreamt about banging you, and that would be awkward, wouldn’t it?_

“Sure,” Adam said. His expression settled into a knowing smile. Ronan might as well have hated him, in that moment.

And then he was gone, back towards the busy kitchen, where everyone was pretending everything was _normal_. Ronan hated that too. He waited it out, though, sat through dinner and kept his mouth shut. Not exactly the life of the party, but not a nuisance either.

Gansey drove Adam home that night, leaving Ronan to return to Monmouth with Noah. Noah must have felt bad about his slip-up earlier, because he was silent the entire drive, leaning his elbow against the window ledge and letting the night breeze stream through him.

Ronan tried to tell him, “Don’t feel bad,” but Noah only grunted in response. He was flickering in and out of existence by the time they pulled up in front of Monmouth, gone when the car stopped, but when Ronan got inside he found Noah crouched beside the model Henrietta, flicking dust off a roof.

“I’m not mad at you,” Ronan said, “if that’s what you think.”

“I’m not really thinking about that,” Noah said, and then disappeared.

Ronan sighed. He sighed loud enough to make sure the entire world could hear him, although he didn’t even have the energy to get an echo off the walls. And he locked himself in the only place where he could put up with this sort of mood—his room, his sanctuary.

A few minutes into lying on his back and thinking about nothing at all, he heard his phone buzz with a text from Gansey: _Staying over at Adam’s tonight, see you tomorrow!_

“That’s fine,” Ronan said to the screen, throwing his phone somewhere onto the floor. He closed his eyes and for good measure threw his arm across his face, praying he’d get to sleep soon, and that he wouldn’t dream of Adam again.

He didn’t—but only because he couldn’t sleep at all. He lay on his back and on his side and on his face until he’d exhausted every possible configurations of his limbs that might eventually lead to sleep, and then he wandered through the model Henrietta and waited for Noah to reappear. It wasn’t as though Noah had been acting weird over dinner.

Ronan traced and paced the scale model until he was dizzy, and settled for lying on the floor at the foot of Gansey’s bed, glaring at the ceiling. And then, Noah came back, perched on the end of the bed with his chin resting in his hands.

“You scare me sometimes,” Ronan said.

Noah was probably grinning, although Ronan couldn’t see his face. “Wouldn’t be a good haunting if I didn’t.”

Ronan sat up and rubbed the back of his head, sore from how long it’d been pressed against the floor.

“Want to talk about it?” Noah asked.

Even if Ronan never said anything, Noah would always know exactly what was going on. No, he _wanted_ Ronan to say it out loud, because he thought it’d be good for him. Well, _Earth to Ghost Boy_ , Ronan thought rudely, no _way_ was he admitting to it. It was a superstition, on the same level as telling a witch your name so she could curse you, but he felt that if he vocalised his feelings for Adam, it would suddenly be _real_ , existing outside of the safety of his mind.

“No fucking way,” he told Noah.

Noah shrugged, beginning to flicker out of visibility. “Suit yourself. I’m telling you now, though, this will become painless if you talk to Adam about it…”

And when had Ronan ever taken the painless option?

As time wore on, he busied himself studying Horace’s odes. The eleventh ode was staring at him. It was a beast to translate, with lines that wandered all over the place, like _tu ne quaesieris scire nefas quem mihi, quem tibi finem di dederint_ —Ronan’s translations were always a little more colloquial than everyone else’s, anyway. _Don’t ask how the Gods will end my life, or yours—it’s a sin to know it_. But how badly he wanted to ask.

And then, a line down, _ut melius quicquid erit pati!_ _Whatever will be, how much better it is to endure it!_

Or, as Ronan’s translation read: _Suck it up!_

There was another line in that poem, something about seizing the day, because you couldn’t trust tomorrow. Ronan spent the night—or all of the early morning, or whatever time it was—thinking about taking action, and what good that might do him.

When morning came, he barely noticed. He drove the long way to Aglionby, only a little tired and only a lot fed up with everything. But there was one blessing—Gansey, alone, and no Adam in sight.

Naturally, Ronan ruined it by asking, “Where’s Parrish?”

Gansey quirked an eyebrow at him, his lips twitching. “Concerned?”

“Well, you were with him last night,” Ronan said. Jesus Christ, he was _not_ going to blush over this. He was not a fucking teenage girl.

“That’s right,” Gansey said slowly.

“And he’s fine?”

With every word that came out of his mouth, Ronan was fucking up more and more. God, how obvious could he _be_? Concern didn’t suit him. Kindness didn’t come naturally. Figures he would slip up around Gansey.

“Yeah, he’s fine,” Gansey said, faster now. “Hey, I have to, uh—I have to, go somewhere… ?”

Ronan made a face. “You what?”

“Wow, look at the time,” Gansey said. “See you in class!”

Gansey almost tripped over his own feet trying to get away, and okay, that was fucking strange—it _had_ to be something to do with Adam, though. Ronan ran through the possibilities in his head, immediately discounting the obvious one, the _sex_ one, because Gansey was too enamoured with Blue for anything like that to happen. Ronan was pissed off with himself for even _thinking_ that.

But then, the only other thing that made sense was that they’d been _talking about him_. Ronan generally didn’t give a shit what people said about him behind his back—God knows he had a lifetime’s experience of that—but when it was his closest friends, yeah, maybe he gave a _bit_ of a shit.

It wasn’t possible that Adam knew about his dream, or about his _feelings_ in general, he reminded himself. It was just not possible. And if he didn’t know, he couldn’t tell Gansey, and they couldn’t have some teenage fucking slumber party gossip and giggle about him. Was this what insecurity felt like? Ronan wanted his money back.

Well, if Gansey was being weird, Ronan was totally justified in blowing off school for the day and wasting a few hours doing burnouts in the suburbs. Hands in his pockets, he made for the gates, and he was about to leave when he saw Adam leaning against a tree, writing in a small notebook.

Like this, he was resplendent. Ronan didn’t want to look at him but he never wanted to look away. Adam was quiet, focused, one leg bent at the knee and balanced against the tree, pen tapping against his nose when he wasn’t writing—which was most of the time.

And, mercifully, Adam didn't notice Ronan. That gave him the advantage. He took a deep breath. There wasn’t anything _weird_ about this, not unless Ronan made it weird. He thought about what Noah said—that they should talk it out. He thought about Horace’s eleventh ode. He thought about the painless option.

“Parrish.”

 

* * *

 

Adam didn’t keep journals. That was Gansey’s thing. And yet, here he was, scrounging up what little money he could and staring at the discount rack at the newsagent near Aglionby. The journals were all spiral-bound and tacky, price tags peeling off cardboard and plastic designs of exaggerated psychedelic flowers and motivational quotes in that one default font on every school computer with the weird curl to it. The least offensive one had a paisley pattern on both covers—it was a little more expensive than Adam might have otherwise allowed himself, but at least he wouldn’t be ashamed to be seen with it.

Although, if someone caught the contents, it might be more than a little embarrassing.

They’d stayed up late last night looking into the effects of ley lines on dreams. Gansey mightn’t have been entirely convinced of that particular dream’s supernatural origin, but he thought it possible that Ronan’s connection to Cabeswater could influence Adam’s dreams. When Adam had suggested it, Gansey was eager to research as much as he could. They stared into his phone screen until it got too late to focus on such small words, and fell asleep side by side on Adam’s small bed.

Adam had woken up to the bed jolting, Gansey scrambling up. “You should keep a dream journal!” he said, buzzing with the excitement of a new research project. “We can keep track of your dreams, and if anything like that happens again… wait, did you dream last night?”

“No,” Adam said, not in the least bit disappointed. “Anyway, it’d be weird to dream about that sort of thing with you right here.”

“Meddling aunt,” Gansey said. “Never listen to your meddling aunt.” He paused, scratching at the mediocre stubble on his chin. “Still. Write everything down.”

So as he walked back to Aglionby, Adam opened up to the first page of his new dream journal and stared at the neat lines, waiting to be filled with his greatest secrets. He was still running early, so he stopped under a tree just outside the gates and took out a pen. He wrote yesterday’s date at the top of the page and drew a bullet point.

How would he even describe it? His memories of the dream weren’t so grounded in reality. Better to start with the obvious. Next to the bullet point he wrote _sex_. For good measure he added, _with ronan_. And what else was there? Already, his memories were slipping away. He wrote another bullet point: _it was pretty good_.

The blank page stared back at him. Next time he’d be more thorough. If it happened again.

“Parrish.”

At the sound of Ronan’s voice from somewhere in his periphery, Adam jumped. His pen clattered to the ground and rolled out of his sight, but his priority was snapping his journal shut and shoving it in his messenger bag. He knew what it looked like, but it’d look even worse if Ronan opened it and saw the words _sex with ronan. it was pretty good_.

Ronan had his eyes narrowed, walking slowly towards Adam as he fumbled with the journal. “What is _up_ with everyone this morning?”

“Everyone?”

“Ugh,” Ronan said, kicking at the pavement, “it’s nothing.”

Adam knew better than to press. “Alright. Sorry for kidnapping Gansey from you last night.”

Ronan grunted. “We should do something tonight.”

 _Oh, no_ —this was too soon. Ronan was giving Adam an opening, an opportunity to say _yes_. He wasn’t asking him out, not quite, but this might be as close as he’d get. And Adam wasn’t ready. Not yet, not when he was still trying to work out if there was anything supernatural about his dream.

“Why don’t we all go to Nino’s?” he suggested. “We can see if Blue’s working.”

He watched Ronan’s face fall, and thought, _I did this_. But there was no time to dwell on it, because Ronan wouldn’t, so Adam couldn’t. He just wasn’t _ready_.

“Yeah,” Ronan said. “If you can find Gansey.”

Adam frowned. “Did something happen?”

Ronan closed his eyes for a moment. “No,” he said eventually.

Double-checking that his bag was fastened closed, Adam turned towards the gates, and like he knew he would, Ronan followed. They found Gansey on their way to English, leaning casually against a brick wall, all practiced nonchalance.

“There you two are!” he said. He did not look surprised. Adam glared at him for good measure.

“You say that like you aren’t the one who ran off,” Ronan sniped.

Gansey waved his hand dismissively. “Details. Let’s go to class.”

“Oh, hey,” Adam said, “Ronan suggested Nino’s tonight.”

Adam caught the edge of Ronan’s trademark glower as he said, “ _You_ suggested Nino’s—”

“Sounds good!” Gansey said. “Blue’s working, so we can give her hell.”

Of _course_ Gansey would know Blue’s work schedule. For a second, Adam felt bad that he _hadn’t_ known. But he wasn’t Blue’s sort-of-boyfriend anymore, or ever again. It wasn’t his problem.

“Great,” Ronan said. “Just what I wanted to do with my night.”

Adam refused to feel bad about _that_ , either.

“It was your idea, wasn’t it?” Gansey asked, a teasing tone to his innocence. Ronan responded by throwing an arm around Gansey and grabbing him in a headlock—Adam walked ahead as they bickered, willing himself to relax.

There was nothing relaxing, though, about the fact that Ronan had asked him out. Ronan wasn’t supposed to make moves. Up until now, Adam hadn’t realised Ronan’s crush was anything more than a long-distance admiration, more than those blink-and-you’ll-miss-it ways he showed he cared. Something he’d act on? Surely not. People like Adam didn’t get asked out. People like Ronan didn’t _court_ people like Adam.

A word flashed at the back of his mind: _manibus_.

Maybe he was wrong about how far Ronan would go.

The day dragged, now that Adam had all of this on his mind. In between the lines of his English notes, he saw Latin love poetry. In maths, he found that every equation had the same solution, although that might just have been the way his pens kept tracing out the same letters, the same answer to a question he had been asking himself for a while now.

After school, they each dropped their cars off at home and Adam waited in front of the church for Gansey to swing by. It was almost unspoken by now that, whenever they went anywhere, they’d take the Camaro. This suited Adam just fine, because Ronan always sat in the front seat beside Gansey. Adam had spent many a long drive staring at the back of Ronan’s head, or at the headrest obscuring it. He was used to that distance.

Things were changing, though, and his embarrassing dream was only the beginning. Ronan was acting different— _there’s no way he can know_ —and now, when Adam opened the Camaro’s back door, he found Ronan sitting at the other end of the seats.

“Noah called shotgun,” Gansey explained amiably.

Adam glared at him, because Gansey and Noah knew _exactly_ what they were doing. It wasn’t impossible, though, that Ronan had absolutely no idea that this was their idea of matchmaking. Either way, it was a bit pathetic. Adam took the seat, but he wasn’t happy about it.

As soon as they were in motion, Gansey picked up on some thread of conversation. Adam had missed the beginning, so he didn’t make an effort to keep up. In fact, like many of Gansey’s conversations, this one was mostly with himself.

Ronan wasn’t keeping up either. He had his head turned out the window, the incandescent sunset framing him like an angel in a fresco, all lit up in orange. It might have been more than the average Henrietta sunset—something bright and brilliant that made Adam want to live inside it. Windows down, the road rushing by, and he felt so _alive_.

All too soon their journey was over. Nothing in Henrietta was too far from anything else.

It must just have been the sunset, because Gansey paused to look, leaning against the side of his car as he got out, one hand up to shield his eyes.

That brought Adam back to the question that had plagued him, that he’d been researching with Gansey. Was his dream the product of something strange and supernatural, or was it the product of a _crush_?

Across the Nino’s parking lot and towards the diner’s weird, warm glow, Adam trailed behind the others. He had a lot on his mind. Too much. Too much to let him step back from it and focus on the facts. That was what emotions tended to do—they were like clouds on a starry night, keeping you from the sights you’d come out to see.

Adam was the last through the entrance. He wondered for a moment why the door stayed open on its own, before he noticed with a start that Ronan was holding it ajar for him. Like everything Ronan did, it was a simple gesture with a lot of feeling behind it. Adam was used to these gestures, so it shouldn’t have done anything different to him, but in the wake of his existential crisis, it took on a different weight, and he realised—

 _Oh_.

—he _liked_ Ronan.

 

* * *

 

Ronan considered the benefits of having absolutely no friends whatsoever. He wouldn’t have any social obligations—the iced tea at Nino’s wasn’t even that good—and he would have so much more time to study. No Monmouth, no Glendower, no fucking _meddling_.

The worst part was they weren’t even subtle. When Ronan had dropped the BMW off at Monmouth, he’d opened the front door to the Pig only to find Noah sprawled in the passenger seat, smugly taking up as much space as he could. Ronan had spent the entire drive in the backseat and _not looking at Adam_ , because he’d royally fucked up, trying to get Adam alone for a night and seize whatever. Adam had either missed it or actively avoided it. Ronan felt like it was the avoidance—well, two could play at that game.

Ronan was willing to cope with one car ride, though. The final straw came when they walked into Nino’s, and Noah immediately followed Gansey into the booth. Gansey didn’t even try to stop him. It was ridiculous, because Ronan usually sat next to Adam at Nino’s anyway. But it was _intention_ that pissed him off. If he _ever_ got anywhere with Adam—unlikely, at this rate—it would be on his own terms. Or Adam’s terms. None of this matchmaking bullshit.

“Ugh, a bunch of raven boys,” Blue said, hovering by their table with her order pad. “I hate it when they come in here.”

“Thanks,” Adam said, “we’ll have an iced tea for the table.”

They placed their orders—two supremes, one with extra cheese—and Blue had to head back to work. She kept shooting glances over at their table, pretending like she didn’t have eyes for Gansey and no-one else. Ronan thought about that sometimes, how Adam had his heart set on Blue and how all of a sudden it was never going to happen. Most of the time, though, he tried _not_ to think about it.

“Hey, so I was thinking—” Gansey began.

“That’s new,” Noah muttered, smirking.

“Quiet, you,” Gansey said, elbowing him. “I was thinking that we should go back to the Barns tomorrow.”

Adam shifted in his seat. “I have work tomorrow afternoon.”

“When do you finish?” Gansey asked. “We can come get you right after.”

“Hold the fuck up,” Ronan interrupted, “do I not get a say in this? Why the hell do you want to go to _my_ home?”

“Research,” Gansey said, like it was the most obvious thing in the world.

Ronan pulled a face. “Boring.”

“Well, what are you researching?” Noah asked—a conciliatory effort, and tokenistic too, because Noah never needed to ask.

Gansey sighed, but patiently. “We’re researching dreams,” he explained, using his Richard Campbell Gansey III voice. It was always worse when it was directed at Ronan. “We know that your dreams are connected to Cabeswater. I want to find out if the connection between dream and location can manifest in different ways. If dreams can be _influenced_ by location.”

“So, to clarify,” Ronan said, “you could just fucking ask me if I dream differently at the Barns.”

To his surprise, it was Adam who spoke next. “Have you considered,” he said, his words a quiet hiss, “that you’re not the only person who has dreams about Cabeswater?”

Huh. Ronan _hadn’t_ considered, but as soon as Adam said it aloud, it made sense. He was the forest’s eyes—of course he could see what it saw. But did that mean—no, no, it wasn’t possible. There was no way Adam could know what Ronan had dreamt of. It was just a coincidence that they were suggesting this now.

“I was talking about this with Adam last night,” Gansey said. “The Barns has a long history of dreamers, so I thought, what would happen if we put Adam in that environment?”

“What sort of dreams have you been having, Adam?” Noah asked.

Adam levelled him with a glare. “It’s Gansey’s idea, not mine.”

Ronan noticed that he didn’t really answer the question, but also, he really didn’t want to know about Adam’s dreams. He had enough of his own to worry about.

“If it’s okay with Ronan,” Gansey clarified.

“Whatever,” Ronan said. “Yeah. Okay.” On the grounds that he hadn’t been to the Barns in a while. Nothing else.

Blue came with their pizzas, and Ronan wished like hell that it’d be the end of the conversation.

“Two supremes for the unruly gang in the corner booth,” she said. “Extra cheese for Adam and Gansey, and boring for Ronan.”

“And are _you_ free to come to the Barns tomorrow afternoon?” Gansey asked, dashing Ronan’s hopes. “We’re doing an experiment.”

It wasn’t very persuasive, and Ronan watched in second-hand embarrassment as Blue pretended to think it over. “Let’s see,” she said, “I’m walking dogs from four to five—”

“That’s fine,” Adam said. “I’m working until half-past. We can meet up then.”

“Sounds good,” Blue said. She shuffled the pizzas across the table. “We’ll pick you up at the… ?”

“Mechanic,” Adam supplied. “Give me a bit of time to head home and shower, at least.”

“Make it six-thirty,” Gansey said. “We’ll call it a dinner date.”

Ronan pointedly didn’t look at Blue, because he was certain she was doing something stupid like _blushing_. Gansey was handsome, and always the gentleman, but that was no reason for girls to fall over him like they did. Unfortunately, redirecting his gaze meant that Ronan was looking straight at Adam, who had a complicated expression on his face. Adam was hard to read. That had never stopped Ronan from trying.

He waited until Gansey was paying to ask. Noah was standing with them, but that was fine—it just meant that Ronan had a good reason not to come on too strong.

“And how do _you_ feel about Gansey’s experiment?

“Honestly?” Adam rolled his shoulders back, his hair flicking across his eyes as he twisted his head, looking up at the sky for a second before looking back at Ronan. “I actually had no idea he was going to suggest it until tonight. We’d talked about all the stuff he said, but nothing about testing our theories.”

“You were quick to back him up, though,” Ronan pointed out.

“And you were quick to agree, too,” Adam snapped. “Don’t act like you’re so above his… his… _persuasiveness_.”

“I wish you two wouldn’t fight,” Noah said.

“We’re not fighting,” Ronan said. He blinked, shaking off the sensation that his voice had come out in stereo, echoing off the walls around the parking lot—a second passed, and he was able to register that Adam had said the exact same thing, at the exact same time.

Noah beamed at them. “Good.”

His smile was infectious. Ronan found himself relaxing into the moment, and when he caught Adam’s eye, Adam smiled back. Ronan’s face was on fire but he bit the inside of his cheek, trying to school his expression.

God, he had it bad.

He didn’t have time to think about it, though, because Gansey came out of Nino’s with that self-satisfied look he got on his face whenever he’d been talking to Blue for more than a few seconds. Ronan hated to think that he ever looked half as lovesick. He probably didn’t, because Adam hadn’t shown any indication of picking up on it, which meant it wasn’t there. Probably.

That night, back at Monmouth, Ronan slept easily. It had been so long since he’d just shut his eyes and switched off the world, drifting away without dreaming. But he couldn’t have been sleeping heavily, because he was still aware of being asleep. His dreams were lucid, his lack of dreams was lucid too. It was what he was used to.

Then, like a switch being flicked, he stepped out of half-consciousness and into a dream, among the trees of Cabeswater.

“Hah,” he said, “took you long enough.”

He looked around for the Orphan Girl, for some sign of what he might be taking back with him, but nothing came. It was a curiously cold night—usually, Cabeswater gave him autumn at the very least. He wandered for a bit, but then settled for loitering by a tree. Not for long, though.

The wind changed, and with it blew the sound of footfall on a carpet of wet leaves. Just like two nights ago, Ronan felt the atmosphere of the dream change, and he braced himself for being a different type of dream to usual.

“You again,” was how he greeted Adam, not meeting his eyes.

“Me again,” Adam said.

Ronan cleared his throat. This had been much easier last time. He hadn’t dreamt up such an _Adam_ Adam as this one was.

“So,” Adam said, “is this the part where we kiss?”

 

* * *

 

Adam didn’t get to sleep right away when he got back to St. Agnes. He paced around his room, hitting his head on the ceiling no fewer than three times while he thought about the way Ronan had smiled at him in the Nino’s parking lot. And just when did he become so desperate for affection that he fixated on things like this? He was an embarrassment to himself. No wonder he’d been dreaming of—

Well.

Now that Adam knew why he had the dream—he’d go along with Gansey’s experiment anyway, if only to experience the Barns again—he wondered if he might have it again. And consciously, this time. He wanted to imagine himself doing something filthy with Ronan just to see if he _could_ , and there was no better environment to test those waters than in a dream.

He got into his bed and lay still for what must have been almost thirty minutes before he fell asleep. Although he was excited by the idea of seeing if he could dream on a whim, he was nervous, too. He had felt so awful after his last dream, dogged by the idea that somehow Ronan, the Greywaren, all-powerful dreamer, could _tell_.

Sleep had an elegant way of putting those worries to one side.

Adam didn’t know how he got there, but suddenly he was standing in Cabeswater. It had been Cabeswater last time too—how was that even practical? He didn’t remember what sort of space they’d found, or what the mechanics of it had been like. Vaguely, he knew his dream journal was on the floor by his bed. This time, he would remember.

And there was Ronan.

“You again.”

Adam raised an eyebrow. “Me again.”

He watched, amused, as the Ronan of his dreams cleared his throat, acting for all the world like a teenager on his first date.

“So,” Adam tried, “is this the part where we kiss?”

 _In your dreams_ , Adam thought.

Dream Ronan shrugged, sticking his hands in his pockets. “You didn’t beat around the bush last time.”

How typical that Adam’s imagined Ronan would know his dreams better than he did. “Didn’t I,” Adam mused.

In response, Ronan took a step closer to him. “It’s more awkward this time, huh.”

“You’re just saying what I’m thinking,” Adam said. If he vocalised his thought process, it seemed more rational. The dream landscape was throwing him off—the real Cabeswater didn’t feel quite like this. This forest didn’t speak to him.

Ronan’s voice dropped a fifth lower. “And what else are you thinking?”

“Alright,” Adam said. He took a deep breath. Dream Ronan was giving him an opportunity. “I’m thinking that, I want to kiss you, but I’m not sure where to start. Like, Ronan, have either of us done this before? Where are we supposed to put our hands?”

Ronan just stared at him.

“And, and,” Adam continued, “last time, I can’t really remember what happened, but I think we had _sex_? What the hell is that about? I don’t even think I’ve seen your dick when we’re changing for PE! I don’t—how the fuck do we get from here to there?”

“Oh my God,” Ronan said, more to himself than to Adam.

Adam paused for breath, leaning forward and putting his hands on his thighs for balance. “I can’t do this,” he said. “I can’t do this, not while I’m so aware. Come back to me when I’m ready to have another abstract dream.”

Before he could check to see how he imagined Ronan would respond to that, Adam turned and ran back among the trees, and then he wasn’t running, he was sitting upright in his bed and his vision was swimming and he thought, _Oh my god, I controlled my dream_ , and then, _I ran away_.

Because of course, even though the opportunity had been right there, _again_ , Adam wasn’t ready to take it. Or, he didn’t want it to happen in a dream. He wanted it to happen with the _real_ Ronan, when he could be sure that it went both ways.

He snatched up his dream journal and wrote everything down, much more detailed this time. He replicated his conversation with Dream Ronan as best he could and when he was done he was shivering and his teeth were chattering, but it was _done_. And was there anything supernatural about that?

Maybe time would tell.

Adam and Gansey had come up with a few theories for how a supernatural dream might work, based on anecdotal evidence they’d managed to scrounge up from the weird corners of the internet. There were stories about groups of campers pitching their tents on ley lines and all dreaming about the same thing, and tales of frequent visitors starting to have recurring dreams. Adam discounted the first one because it would mean that Ronan shared his dream that night, and Ronan had shown no sign of anything like that. Ronan had been dreaming up a Latin textbook. The second option made a bit more sense, that somehow Cabeswater was influencing the way Adam dreamt.

And perhaps the first dream had been like that, abstract, devoid of any sense of consequence, but this one—no, this was much more tangible. For the first time, Adam had talked himself into a lucid dream, no doubt aided a little by the forest that served as a conduit and setting. He was swamped by a confusion of feelings, coalescing into one thought: _I want it to be real_.

He didn’t get back to sleep that night, lying on his side and periodically closing his eyes just so that he wouldn’t adjust to the darkness, just in case he did drift off. And when morning came, he ignored it, turning over to face away from the window.

But he would have to face the daylight—and Ronan—eventually. After all, this was the day they were going to put Gansey’s theory to the test. Adam wanted to bail, to tell Gansey it was a waste of time, but he couldn’t bear the thought of letting Gansey down.

So he’d do it. He’d do it and then it would be done and he’d never have to _think_ about his stupid dreams ever again.

For all his prevaricating, he made himself late for school. Lateness was not something he could afford when he was still living with his parents, but it was all too easy in the apartment at St. Agnes. He could go at his own pace, take his time, as though he didn’t have any more pressing concerns. It was a seductive lifestyle, and he detested himself for giving into it so easily.

The school day stretched ahead of him like an endless highway out of Henrietta—like the one they would take to the Barns that evening. And then at the end of school, there was work, and after work there was being cooped up in a car with Ronan. It seemed interminable, and Adam became exhausted just thinking about it. He coped with it, though, because he had no other choice, because his grades depended on it. And if that meant hours of awkwardness with Ronan and having to endure Gansey’s absolute inability to keep a secret, then that’s what Adam would do.

At least he didn't see Ronan until second period, maths. It was one of those subjects that didn't come naturally to Adam, but to be top of the grade you had to be top of maths by necessity. So Adam was top of maths. Ronan, sitting just to his left, was no better at maths than anyone else, and it showed in how easily distracted he became. Adam tried to focus on what they were being taught, but it was hard when Ronan was _right there_ and drawing dicks in his margins.

 _There’s no way he can know_.

Ronan wouldn't meet Adam’s eyes, no matter how many times he glanced across. And when class let out, he disappeared straight away, leaving Adam leaning against his desk, confused, boggling at the space which Ronan had just filled.

“What’s up with him?”

“No more than the usual,” Gansey said. “He’s always moody when he thinks of the Barns. I know it’s my fault for suggesting that.”

Adam sighed. “Why _did_ you suggest it? I wish you would’ve run it by me first.”

“But don’t you think it’s a good opportunity?” Gansey asked, grinning.

“Oh my god,” Adam said, “please tell me you’re not _matchmaking_.”

“Meddling aunt,” was all Gansey said.

“Meddling aunt,” Adam agreed, feeling all his energy leave him in one great slump. “You can’t contain yourself, huh?”

“In my defence,” Gansey said, “it _is_ an excellent opportunity for research. If you have another, um, dream like that, you can see if it changes with the Barns, and if so, how so.”

For a moment, Adam imagined him telling Gansey that he _had_ dreamt it again. But that would ruin the fun, and ruin the way Gansey had built up this trip in his mind. And the last thing Adam ever wanted to do was let Gansey down.

He kept quiet, restricting his response to a shrug. “I guess we’ll find out.”

 

* * *

 

Ronan didn’t have freak-outs. He didn’t break down and he never screamed and shouted unless he was talking to Declan. He didn’t startle easily and he was never offended. The times he’d come close to freaking out, he could count on one hand.

The fourth was around one in the morning, waking up from a dream. Ronan slapped his hand to his mouth so he didn’t wake everyone in Henrietta, and cursed. He swore vitriol and spat invective until he calmed down some, and then he got up and paced his room and kicked whatever was in his path, until he calmed down some more.

This was how he figured it: the last time he’d dreamt about Adam, it was less _formed_ than his usual dreams. At the time, it had felt vivid, but then it was something he’d never experienced before, so how could it have felt otherwise? He only noticed the difference when there _was_ a difference, when Adam showed up in this dream acting for all the world like himself.

Adam Parrish. The _real_ Adam Parrish. Right there, in Ronan’s dream.

It wasn’t that it seemed impossible. In fact, it was almost too convenient an explanation. It was that if Adam had been in Ronan’s dream, yelling shit about kissing and hands going places and _the last dream_ , then he knew. He _knew_.

Ronan bit at the leather straps around his wrist, teeth catching on skin and sending a discontented shiver through him. Adam _knew_. He’d been there for the first dream, the one that felt less like a Ronan dream and—and what did _Adam’s_ dreams feel like? Had that dream been different because it was one of Adam’s?

Either way, Ronan intuitively knew that this was down to Cabeswater, his nocturnal host, and now Adam’s too. When he thought about it, he wondered why it hadn’t started sooner.

But then he thought about the _possibilities_. If he could share dreams with Adam, he could have literally mind-bending sex without lifting a finger. The lazy bastard’s fantasy. And if he could pull his own blood out of a dream—which had happened a few times too many, enough that he wasn’t going to dwell on it—would his _other_ bodily fluids make it to reality? Dream semen. Now there was a thought.

Ronan didn’t let himself get too carried away. He tried to get back to sleep, and failed—what else was new—pacing and swearing and kicking things until it was a respectable time to head to school.

He was jumpy, expectant, his mind caught on the Barns that evening. But first, he had to sit through a full day of class, and first period was biology.

“This is new,” Gansey said. “You’re on time!”

“Don’t sound so surprised,” Ronan grumbled. “I would’ve come in with you, only you’d left by the time I got up.”

Gansey raised an eyebrow. “Got up or got out of bed?”

“Hey, insomniac,” Ronan said, “takes one to know one.”

“At least we have a reason to stay up tonight,” Gansey said.

Ronan thought about what Adam had yelled at him in his dream. It had been so true to life. Just what was the full extent of Cabeswater’s powers? Maybe Gansey’s experiment would help them work it out.

“What’s the plan?” he asked.

Gansey hummed. “I don’t know, really. I’ve been winging it. The plan is, we get Adam to sleep, and then…”

The way he trailed off said everything. It _clicked_ for Ronan—he spent a lot of time with Gansey feeling like he’d missed the point of some great secret, but now the secret was his. Gansey was doing this because he knew about Adam’s dreams, the very same dreams that Ronan had—and, somehow, Adam knew they had to do with Cabeswater. Was it because the dreams had taken place there? Was it because he didn’t think he could have that sort of dream on his own? Either way, it made sense that Adam would confide in Gansey. It made sense that Gansey would try to get to the bottom of it.

For all that knowledge, though, Ronan had no idea what to do with it. He could just tell Gansey that he’d worked it out, and get the whole trip called off.

_But what if there’s something in it?_

“And then see what happens?”

“Bingo,” Gansey said. “We see what happens.”

Ronan couldn’t argue with that. There was a very long list of things he could—and, given the opportunity, _would_ —argue with, and Gansey had never been one of them. His teachers, however, were fair game, and bore the brunt of his frustration that day. He wanted to skip class, but maybe some of Gansey’s zeal for research had started to get to him, because he found himself observing Adam and looking for clues that he was thinking about the dream they’d shared.

Adam, for his part, did a great deal of ignoring Ronan. It seemed that every time Ronan looked to him, Adam looked away.

It was like when they fought. They’d go for days on end without talking, making an art of avoidance. This made things hard for Gansey—Ronan thought about that a lot, about what it was like for your two best friends to spiral in and out of these cycles of hating one another. If Adam and Gansey fought, it was never for long. Every time Adam fought with Ronan, there was no way of telling whether or not it would be permanent.

For so long, they’d gone without it happening. Unbelievable, Ronan thought, that it would happen over something so stupid as a misunderstanding.

After school, he retreated to the bathroom and splashed his face with water on the off-chance that it brought him back to Earth. The water was near-frozen, carried through ancient pipes in thermal equilibrium with winter, the sort that couldn’t even be fixed by Aglionby throwing money at them. And small defects lent some sort of charm to an old school, letting it pretend it was even older, more of a fixture.

They agreed on taking the BMW to the Barns. Or, rather, the others agreed that Ronan would not have it any other way, so they would let him drive the BMW there. All before he’d even spoken.

When Ronan got out of the bathroom and made his way to the carpark, he found Gansey and Adam by the BMW, Adam tossing a coin up and down.

“Heads,” Ronan said.

With a deftness Ronan hadn’t seen in him before, Adam flipped the coin onto the back of his hand, palm flat to cover it. “Tails,” he said, lifting his palm and, turning to Gansey, added, “You lose.”

“What’s the toss for?” Gansey asked.

Adam smirked. “Who gets to call shotgun.” He patted the passenger side door. “That’d be me.”

“I’ll just have to sit in the back,” Gansey said. He didn’t sound too disappointed about it. Ronan watched, incredulous, as Gansey shot Adam a grin—they were in this together.

It was so obvious now that Ronan knew what he was looking for. The other day, when Gansey had run away from him—that would be because Gansey couldn’t tell a lie if his life depended on it, and now Ronan knew what his secret was. He knew that Gansey knew that Adam knew but neither of them knew that Ronan knew. It was liberating.

“You have to say it,” Ronan said, twirling his keys.

Adam rolled his eyes. “Shotgun, Lynch.”

Ronan unlocked the car and let them in. He took to the front seat like he belonged there—which, in more ways than one, he did.

“Okay, so we’ll swing by 300 Fox Way,” Gansey said, “and then hit the highway.”

“Not just yet,” Ronan said. “I need to stop off at Monmouth first.”

Ronan watched as Adam buckled his seatbelt. He had such long fingers. It was hard to look away from him as he asked, “To get Noah?”

“I’m right here,” Noah said, appearing in the backseat.

“Good haunting,” Adam said. “I give it seven out of ten. Could use more unexplained noises and flickering lights.”

Noah stuck out his tongue.

“No,” Ronan said, “we need to pick up Chainsaw.”

“Such a good friend,” Gansey said wistfully. He got this sentimental look on his face, like he thought it was _cute_. What an awful thought.

With Chainsaw in tow, perched on Adam’s knee, they drove for 300 Fox Way. Ronan kept his eyes on the road and very much did _not_ look at how Chainsaw let Adam run his long fingers through her feathers. She took more of a liking to Adam than she ever had to anyone who wasn’t Ronan. This was probably because Ronan took more of a liking to Adam than he ever had to anyone who wasn’t himself.

By the time they pulled up and Blue climbed in, Noah phasing out momentarily to let her into the middle seat, the sky overhead was greying with clouds, shifting the sunlight left and right as they blew with the strong wind. The threat of the rain hung low over Henrietta, some sort of ill omen.

Ronan didn’t believe in fate, though. He drove on.

 

* * *

 

Things had been awkward with Blue since—no, things had always been awkward with Blue. Adam was so fond of her that sometimes it hurt. She was like him, sprouting from Henrietta soil and no way to grow towards the sun without working for it. But beyond that, she had a way of drawing people together and making them _more_ of themselves.

Adam wasn’t used to being in the front seat of the BMW. He had his bad ear towards Ronan, which was a mixed blessing, and if the angle was right he could glimpse the rearview mirror. Blue sat between Noah and Gansey, and it looked so right that Adam’s heart could’ve burst. Blue made Noah more, brought him into exquisite detail. She eased the real Gansey out from behind his artifice.

And Ronan—no matter how much he pretended she didn’t, Blue brought out something in Ronan too. Adam couldn’t put a name to it, but seeing them in the same place was like an illumination. Adam definitely had a type. But where Blue drew out people’s strengths, Ronan drew out their demons. He held up a circus mirror, distorted but so true to life, as if to say, _See? This is you_. It was confronting, to be drawn to someone like that. Adam couldn’t have said why he was, or even when it began. Knowing it was there, though—that would be enough.

It got darker as they drove, and with it Adam’s unease multiplied. He wasn’t sure what he’d find out about himself at the Barns, if anything, but he was determined to try.

The air was damp when they got out of the BMW, humid and frosty. Adam realised he’d forgotten his dream journal. His joints were stiff from sitting, and he stumbled into the knee-high grass, stretching, turning his face up to the sky. From the grey, a single drop fell. He followed the sensation of the drop rolling down his cheek, like the dust of a barren creek bed coming alive after a drought. Unconsciously, his arms fanned out by his sides. He had arrived there specifically to greet the rains. Needles of water parted the grass around him, blades brushing against his legs. Even though it was cold, he wished he was wearing shorts.

“Adam… ?”

His eyes followed the sound of Gansey’s voice. The others were already on the porch, to his right—no, Gansey and Ronan and an echo of Noah were there. Blue was by Adam’s side. Gently, she took him by the wrist.

“Are you alright?”

“It’s raining,” he said.

Blue looked at him curiously. “It might soon,” she said.

Touching his fingers to his cheek, Adam pulled them away dry. “I guess it might,” he said.

Blue let go of him and walked up to the porch. Adam followed. In time with his first foot landing on a step, he heard a roll of thunder in the distance.

“So,” Gansey said, “where should we do this?”

Ronan raised an eyebrow. Chainsaw sat on his shoulder, tilting her head quizzically. “I still don’t know what we’re meant to be doing.”

“Well, let’s put it this way,” Gansey said. “Adam needs somewhere he can fall asleep, and somewhere quiet, so he can explore anything he dreams without being interrupted.”

“A bedroom, then,” Adam said. “What you’re describing is a bedroom.”

“Right, one of those places where people sleep.” Sometimes it was hard to tell whether Gansey was joking or genuinely a little clueless.

“You,” Ronan began, his teeth too close together for his speech to be anything other than strained, “can use my bedroom. If you want.”

“It would certainly feel the least intrusive,” Gansey said, nodding.

Ronan pulled a face that indicated he thought it was the most intrusive thing possible, but he also turned on his heel and led the way into the house. Chainsaw stayed behind, a sentinel before the palace.

Adam had been to the Barns before, but it would never stop feeling like spiritual trespass to step over its threshold. He almost took his shoes off at the door—no-one else did, though, so he didn’t either. Ronan headed up a flight of stairs and towards his old bedroom. If this was weird for Adam, he reminded himself, it was _weird_ for Ronan.

Someone had stripped the bedroom since Ronan had last been it—that could be the only reason it was so bare. The bed had no sheets, just a mattress on a wire frame.

They all looked at it like something might happen.

“What,” Adam said, “you’re all going to watch me sleep?”

Gansey ran his thumb along his lower lip, furrowing his eyebrows. “There’ve been no untoward physical consequences from your dreams, have there?”

 _Apart from a hard-on that one time?_ “No,” Adam said, “none.”

Ronan gave him that concerned look. Adam loved that concern directed towards him. He hated it.

“Maybe one of us can sit with him,” Blue suggested.

Adam expected all of them, Gansey, Blue, and Noah, to jump on the suggestion that it should be Ronan. What he did not expect was Ronan to say, “I’ll do it,” before anyone else spoke.

“Great idea,” Gansey said. “After all, you’re the most experienced dreamer out of us.”

Ronan’s expression kept flickering between consternation and frustration and the _something else_ that Adam wished he could show on his face. He imagined being as obvious as Ronan. Knowable, in his own way. That, he thought, was impossible.

“That’s nice of you,” Adam said. To mitigate any sentiment he might be displaying, he added, “Although I think you’re only doing it so that I don’t accidentally break something while I’m dreaming.”

“Yeah, sure,” Ronan said. He very deliberately did not meet Adam’s eye, but Adam wouldn’t have needed to notice that to know that he was lying.

Gansey looked around the room. Adam guessed he was thinking that there wasn’t much to break, but what he said was, “Say, Ronan, do you mind if we look around a bit while you and Adam are dreaming?”

Adam was more convinced than ever that this entire experiment was a ploy by Gansey to get Adam and Ronan locked in a cupboard, or something typical like that. Gansey looked all too proud of himself. But, it was Ronan who’d volunteered to stay. And there was no way he was in on it.

 _He can’t possibly know_.

That gave Adam a little bit of reassurance. Ronan still liked him. That, at least, was very real.

“Yeah,” Ronan said, “I don’t give a shit. Just don’t break anything.”

And then it was just the two of them.

“So,” Adam said.

Ronan still wasn’t looking at him. “So are you going to lie down or what?”

“Oh,” Adam said. “Yeah.”

The bed was neither warm nor inviting, and it didn’t have any of whatever it was that drew people into Ronan’s orbit. It was just a bed. Adam didn’t look at it and think, _Wow, I bet I’ll have amazing dreams now!_ He didn’t look at it and think anything at all—except, passingly, that he might like to lie beside Ronan, and how nice that would be.

Now wasn’t the time for that, though. He lay on his back and folded his hands over his stomach like a corpse waiting on the slab. When Ronan was satisfied that Adam was lying down and trying to sleep, he folded up on himself and sat down on the floor, tugging at his wristbands. Adam had his eyes closed, but not enough that he couldn’t see Ronan.

Ronan was at his most when he didn’t think anyone could see him. The walls went down—not entirely, but enough, like curtains drawn after a show and the mechanism failing, leaving a gap through to the backstage area. Adam wanted to see him like this all the time. _This_ was the Ronan he’d fallen for, the private, personal Ronan, the Ronan he had set aside for his eyes only.

It was tiring, though, maintaining that state of half-consciousness, and Adam gave in to a growing urge to just let his eyes close.

He wasn’t sure if he was dreaming already or if it actually _had_ begun to rain, but there was a rhythmic pattering outside the window and then on the windowpane, a change with the wind, and the monotony set Adam well into a dream.

Finally, he saw the darkness of sleep.

A second later, his eyes opened onto Cabeswater. There it was, just as it had been last night—no Ronan, though. Adam found that he had agency, which was a start, and took a tentative step forward. As he moved among the trees, some other forms became clear at the limits of his vision. They weren’t as real as Ronan had been, but they were there, waiting for him.

“Adam,” Noah said, “you’re so _alive_.”

“I know,” Adam said.

“You can do whatever you want,” Blue said. “Don’t listen to anyone who says you can’t. You’re Adam Parrish. You’re the magician. You can build your own wings.”

“I know,” Adam said.

“Just don’t fly too close to the sun,” Gansey added. His face was indistinct, but his smile was blinding.

“I—”

“I’m kidding,” Gansey said, suddenly serious. “It’s _you_ , Adam. You can take risks, because you’ve got us to put out the fire if your wings catch. And you’ve got Ronan. You know that.”

“I know,” Adam said. “I know.”

Blue took a step forward. “So go get him.”

Adam Parrish woke up.

 

* * *

 

At any given moment, it was impossible to tell what Adam was thinking.

Ronan felt like a creep. He _was_ a creep. He was sitting cross-legged on the floor of his childhood bedroom, watching Adam sleep. Adam, a boy haunted by his own personal ghosts wherever he went. Ronan felt like a creep for thinking that he was so beautiful when he slept. But he _was_ , he was the most beautiful thing Ronan had ever seen, all strange lines and fine details. Ronan wished he were more of an artist, so he could draw those lines.

Adam’s chest rose and fell in time with the steady rain outside. Ronan tried to focus on just that, just his breathing, so he wouldn’t think about anything else. It didn’t work. He was too aware, too aware of how Adam had a rhythm of his own, synchronised with the weather. He was magic made flesh.

Quietly, Chainsaw came in through the door. Ronan had left it ajar for her. She seemed to know not to disturb Adam, and hopped along the floor to sit on Ronan’s knee. Instinctively, he cupped his hand around her back, smoothing down her feathers. She was a disgruntled thing, wet from the rain, feathers sticking out at odd angles.

 _Like Adam_ , Ronan thought; Chainsaw was magic made flesh. Ronan was so used to dreaming things to life that he was startled by the idea of someone so magical, so human, and so apart from Ronan. Maybe he liked Adam _because_ Adam had nothing to do with him or his past or his messy, uncontrollable, very personal magic. Adam’s magic wasn’t neat, but it wasn’t his, either. It was hard to forget that Cabeswater was there with him all the time. To be with Adam was to be with the forest.

Ronan would take it all, if that’s what it took.

But, he was stuck with this secret. It was the kind where two people had a secret between themselves, and a third party kept it without their knowledge. Adam’s dreams—Adam’s dreams that he’d shared with Ronan—were the secret. But, God, how badly Ronan wanted to spill it.

Chainsaw _caw_ ed, just softly, and the spell was broken. On the bed, Adam stirred. He was even more beautiful waking, the slow process of rubbing sleep from his eyes and sitting up, the mattress creaking beneath him.

It took a few moments before he seemed to notice that Ronan was there. “Oh. Hey.”

“Did you sleep?” Ronan asked.

“Yeah, a bit,” Adam said. “It wasn’t—it wasn’t any different to usual. More lucid, maybe.”

Of course. Ronan could’ve guessed as much. He was awake, after all. Adam wouldn’t dream them together if he wasn’t sleeping too.

 _Tell him_.

“I wish I had something to tell Gansey,” Adam continued. “I’m letting him down, I know. This was a waste of time.”

“It doesn’t need to be,” Ronan said quickly. “We could move somewhere else. Try again.”

Adam had a sad smile—it was his default. Here, now, in these circumstances, it made Ronan feel so much worse.

“Sure,” Adam said. “Did you have anywhere in mind?”

On Ronan’s knee, Chainsaw flapped about, leaving pinpoint drops of water on his hand and on the floor. “Maybe it would help for you to be outdoors,” he said. “Closer to… nature.”

“This isn’t Cabeswater,” Adam said, a little facetiously.

“I know that,” Ronan snapped. “I—”

 _Tell him_.

“Let’s just go outside, okay? Let’s just try it.”

“Fine,” Adam said. “Fine, Ronan.”

The Barns were always beautiful, but Ronan thought they were particularly beautiful in a thunderstorm. He wasn’t one to wax poetic about nature—he had a very good working policy of _all poetry is bullshit_ , unless it was Latin poetry, in which case he’d pretend to begrudgingly make an exception—but there was something about it. He liked storms. They were wild, unpredictable, and left lasting damage. Like Ronan.

Like Adam.

Ronan didn’t need poetry, anyway. Nature had its own metre, its own grammar and rhetoric. Like Latin, it didn’t need word order to convey meaning. It had all the pieces in place, and it laid them down all at once, leaving you to find meaning within the disorder. But that disorder was what made it beautiful. The Barns were wild too, ivy growing like a weed and vines springing up in a stranglehold around every tree, but no less spectacular for it.

They sat on the top step down from the porch. Adam doubled forward, his chin propped up on his hands. “It’s funny,” he said, “but you’re right.”

“About what?”

“I _do_ feel like I could dream better out here.” Adam sighed with the wind. “It’s loud, and I don’t know how I’d get to sleep… but I think I’d like to try.”

Ronan watched as Chainsaw flew away and disappeared into the fog. “Now?”

Adam hummed. “No. Not now.”

 _Tell him_.

“But I don’t want to give up for good,” Adam continued.

He was talking it through with himself, rationalising his thought process live as it happened. Adam was so very internal, drawn into his own world but simultaneously so aware of the world around him, and how he fitted into it. He would be used to going through these processes in his own head—Ronan allowed himself a moment’s indulgence, to wonder why Adam would give him access to these thoughts. It was probably nothing.

“I don’t think you should give up,” he said, despite everything he knew. “I don’t—”

“Hey,” Adam said, “can we talk about something else?”

Ronan nodded. He moved a little closer to Adam when he wasn’t looking. He wondered if Adam noticed anyway. “Latin homework?”

Adam laughed humourlessly. “Yeah, I guess. Got your translation ready for next Monday?”

“As if,” Ronan said. “I’ll do it on the spot.”

“I’m Ronan Lynch,” Adam teased, “and homework is for fucking losers. I don’t need passing grades because I can prove I’m cool without—”

“Oh, fuck off,” Ronan said.

“I’m kidding,” Adam said. “I know you don’t need to do your homework to get passing grades.”

Ronan knew how much Adam worked, and sometimes he did feel bad for breezing through Latin without lifting a finger. But it was the only subject where he could do that. To get the grades he needed anywhere else, he had to work his butt off just as hard as Adam did. The only difference was that Adam worked more, had _jobs_. Ronan couldn’t imagine what that was like. Not for the first time, he very actively refused to feel bad about it.

“Go on, then,” Ronan said. “Which one is it for Monday?”

“Number eleven,” Adam said. “I think. _Carpe diem_.”

 _Tell him_.

“I know which one number eleven is,” Ronan said. “And for your information, Parrish, I’ve already got a translation of that one.”

Adam laughed. “A Ronan translation, or a proper one?”

“I can only do one kind,” Ronan informed him. “There’s nothing better than a vernacular translation.”

“A passing grade?” Adam suggested with an exaggerated shrug.

“Don’t be such a wiseass,” Ronan said. He didn’t really mind, though. If Adam was making fun of him, then it meant he was more himself than usual. That in itself made Ronan feel a little more hopeful.

Adam paused, fidgeting. His knee knocked against Ronan’s, and he didn’t move it. Ronan bit his bottom lip. Adam opened his mouth, and he might have said something, but a flash of lightning in the distance cut him off. It was a shocking yellow light, cutting the sky clean in half, leaving nothing but dusty orange in its wake.

“Want to go inside?” Ronan asked. The others would be in there somewhere, exploring, doing whatever it was they did when Ronan and Adam weren’t there to make things awkward.

“I’d rather not,” Adam said. “If that’s okay.”

“That’s fine,” Ronan said. “Jesus Christ, who am I to—”

He cut himself off.

“Jesus, Parrish. Whatever’s okay.”

Blinking away the residual lightning, Adam smiled so slightly that Ronan might’ve missed it if he hadn’t been paying such close attention.

“Thanks, Ronan,” he said. “I guess I should be honest with you.”

 _Tell him_.

“Aren’t you always honest?”

Adam shook his head. “You wouldn’t even know the half of it.”

“I don’t follow,” Ronan said.

 _Tell him_.

“I knew this wouldn’t work,” Adam said. “The dreams. This—everything.”

That was it. This was the moment. _Tell him_ , Ronan’s head screamed. _Tell him!_ But Ronan knew better than to just blurt it out. There were so many ways Adam could react. None of them were pretty. No, slowly, he’d ease Adam into the idea that they shared dreams. He’d do it carefully, and with tact—not what Ronan Lynch would do, but what someone worthy of Adam Parrish would do. Someone Ronan wished he could be, if not for his own sake, then for Adam’s.

Like everything he did. For Adam.

 

* * *

 

Adam steadied himself. If he didn’t say it now, he might never have another chance. Moments like this didn’t happen every day—sitting side by side on the front steps to the main house at the Barns, so close their knees were touching, the rain coming down heavy now.

“I knew this wouldn’t work,” he said. “The dreams. This—everything.”

“Don’t sound so fucking morbid about it,” Ronan said. “It’s not like you’re letting anyone down. Not even Gansey.”

“It’s not even that I had another lucid dream,” Adam said. “I—Ronan, if I’m being honest, I think the idea of supernaturally-influenced dreams only came to me because I was trying to explain away something I didn’t think was real.”

Ronan wasn’t looking at Adam when he said, “I know.”

“You _know_?” Adam spat. He couldn’t help himself—if that was what it took, then he’d start another fight with Ronan. “How the hell could you _possibly_ know what I’ve been dreaming about?”

“So, funny thing about that,” Ronan said. He wasn’t laughing.

If Ronan wasn’t bullshitting him—which, there was always the chance that he _was_ —then the consequences of that were unimaginable. If he knew what Adam was dreaming, then—

“Oh, fuck,” Adam said. “Don’t tell me you can spy on other people’s dreams now? Great! Fucking fantastic! Just another marvellous skill the Greywaren can add to his resumé.”

“It’s not like that!” Ronan protested. “Listen, Parrish. No, just—shut the fuck up for a moment and listen, okay?”

Reluctantly, Adam closed his mouth, pursed his lips. He didn’t like this. There was absolutely nothing to redeem this situation. He twisted his fingers around each other, enough torsion that it hurt and he _felt_ it. A necessary distraction.

“Three nights ago,” Ronan began, “I had this dream. This is going to sound fucking ridiculous however I say it, so I’m just going to fucking say it, and—I had this dream, and we… well, you were in it, and we were…”

“Oh my god,” Adam said. So this was it. The implications were beginning to settle on him. He didn’t want Ronan to continue, but then, when had Ronan ever done what other people wanted?

“So it happened again last night,” Ronan said. “I mean, not the—the _thing_ —but that you were in my dream again, and it was _you_ , Adam, and you started yelling some shit at me about seeing my dick—”

Of _course_ that was the part he fixated on. Adam couldn’t do anything except stare, face blank with shock. It wasn’t just a lucid dream. It wasn’t just a supernatural dream. It was a _shared_ dream.

Ronan was still talking. Adam could scream.

“It’s just coincidence,” he said. “There’s no way we could… no, there’s no way.”

Ronan looked at Adam like he was stupid. “This is Cabeswater we’re talking about.”

“What about the textbook?” Adam pressed. “You dreamt the textbook that morning.”

“Some people can have more than one dream a night, you know,” Ronan said.

“Coincidence,” Adam said, because it wasn’t.

Ronan inched slightly closer to Adam, his fingers scraping along the wooden porch.

Adam kissed him.

It wasn’t anything like how he’d imagined it— _dreamt_ was another word that came to mind. It wasn’t as though he’d imagined it at all. Their noses were touching. Their _lips_ were touching. A gust of wind misdirected the rain right onto their legs, boring watery holes through Adam’s jeans and dripping down his legs. His socks were sodden. He was freezing. He didn’t care. He didn’t care about _anything_.

“We can share dreams,” Ronan said. He barely sounded like himself. Adam felt the words against his lips. It was a lightning strike, and he was the tallest tree in the forest.

“I like you too,” he said. He put a hand on top of Ronan’s where it rested on the porch. Their noses were touching. Their _hands_ were touching.

Ronan leant back, just a bit. “I didn’t say anything.”

“It’s sort of obvious,” Adam said. “You’re always looking at me like—yeah, like you’re doing now, Ronan! You dreamt me a Horace textbook full of Catullus at his worst. I think I’m justified in saying that you like me.”

“Shit,” Ronan said. “Well, sorry I fucked up on the textbook, I guess. _Pedicabo ego vos et_ —”

“Not yet!” Adam said, shoving his free hand over Ronan’s lips, cutting him off. There was very little space between their mouths. It was weirdly attractive, how Ronan always spoke Latin with the proper pronunciation, classical rather than ecclesiastical, and with the right elisions between adjacent vowels. Most people didn’t find invective poetry particularly romantic, though.

Most people weren’t Ronan Lynch.

Ronan laughed against Adam’s palm, not even bothering to push him away. He knew that Adam would get tired and drop his arm, and he did.

“Let me say it,” Ronan said. “Fuck, this is surreal—I _like_ you, Adam.”

“I like you too,” Adam said. “Did I already say that?”

“You already said that,” Ronan said.

Adam smiled. He wondered if he would ever stop, if he _could_. “We can share dreams.”

“ _I_ already said that,” Ronan said.

“I know, but it’s… it’s something to think about, isn’t it?” Adam rolled his shoulders back. “This has a lot of consequences, for us, for Cabeswater. Gansey’s going to have a field day.”

“Fuck Gansey,” Ronan said, “I don’t want to share this secret.”

“He’s going to wonder about the experiment,” Adam said.

“We’ll tell him it failed,” Ronan said. “Hey, when are you going to kiss me again?”

Sharp turns and quick thinking were Ronan’s trademark. Adam couldn’t always keep up with him. “What—oh, you know you can do that too, right?”

With the gentleness that no-one ever expected from him, Ronan brought a hand up to Adam’s face, ran a thumb along his cheekbone. “Can I?”

“Whenever you want,” Adam said. He laughed, giddy with the unreality of the situation. “You can literally kiss me whenever you want, oh my god—”

Ronan kissed the same way he did most things: roughly, but with a lot of feeling. He kissed with all the wonder of a dreamer but all the strength of a survivor, and with his mouth set in the same smile as Adam’s, like they still couldn’t believe it was happening.

“You know,” Adam said, “I don’t want us to get ahead of ourselves, but you could be my boyfriend. If you wanted.”

Because giving it a name would make it real, because making it formal would give it consistency—mostly, though, because Adam _wanted_ to call Ronan his boyfriend. He wanted to sit in the passenger seat of the BMW and hold hands over the gear stick. He wanted to give Ronan what space was left in his bed at St. Agnes. He wanted to invite Ronan as his guest to one of Gansey’s mother’s parties—see how the old money would like _that_. And he wanted to kiss Ronan, whenever he wanted.

“Fuck you, Adam Parrish,” Ronan said, “of course I fucking want to.”

There, on the steps, in the rain, they kissed again. They pulled each other closer with the magic of being at a place like the Barns, with the knowledge that they had a connection beyond the mundane, but that it would exist in their everyday lives too.

They kissed until they heard footsteps coming back from the house, stayed close until they heard the front door swing open. Then, they sat a little bit too far apart for it to be convincing. Ronan, Adam reflected, was by nature absolutely _terrible_ at acting innocent.

“So how did it go?” Gansey asked, crouching between them—there wasn’t quite enough space for him to sit.

“Yeah,” Adam said. “It went, um.” Apparently, the capacity to form sentences had left him when he realised there were better things to do with his mouth. “How was your exploration?”

“Oh, fascinating,” Gansey said. “I’m so glad Ronan let us look around.”

“Although we spent most of our time sitting in the front room playing bullshit,” Blue said.

Gansey flushed red. “We thought you’d give you as much time as you needed.”

“It’s eleven,” Noah added.

“Holy fuck,” Ronan said. It was like hearing the time had snapped him back to reality. “We have school tomorrow.”

Blue raised her eyebrows so high they got lost under her bangs. “Since when did you care about being on time for—since when did you care about _school_?”

“I don’t, idiot,” Ronan said, getting to his feet so he could ruffle her hair. From the far side of the porch, Chainsaw flew over and perched on Ronan’s shoulder, _caw_ ing contentedly. Adam was absurdly embarrassed by the idea that Chainsaw might have seen them making out. She was just a bird. It wasn’t like she could tell anyone.

“Either way,” Gansey said, “he’s stumbled upon the right idea. We should get back.”

There was a sort of glow to the Barns that set it outside time, making it seem lighter, earlier than it actually was. The heavy cloud didn’t help, and the rain didn’t let up as they ran for the BMW.

Adam took the passenger seat without any competition. He ridded himself of his wet shoes and socks and leant back against the seat, watching raindrops weaving down the windshield. In the backseat, Blue and Gansey started comparing their homework loads for the coming weeks, and Noah boasted about his very free calendar.

Ronan, as always, drove too fast, but he was quiet, only occasionally tapping his fingers rhythmically against the steering wheel. Adam wondered if he _really_ needed both hands to drive.

Experimentally, he dropped his left hand off the edge of the seat, dangling it in the space between. It wouldn’t be long before Ronan noticed—he couldn’t stop looking at Adam, more than usual. Now, he didn’t bother to disguise it.

Adam didn’t want to wait, though. Quietly, barely louder than the rain, he whispered, “Ronan.”

Their eyes met, and Adam redirected his gaze to his hand. Ronan’s eyes followed, and widened when he realised what Adam was suggesting. He flickered a glance to the backseat as if to say, _Won’t they notice?_

Adam grinned back, to say, _Who cares?_

Ronan must have thought this was fair, because a beat later his right hand slipped down from the steering wheel and his fingertips touched Adam’s, hesitantly at first. Adam would have to be bold enough for both of them—he linked their fingers together, so there was no mistaking the fact that they were holding hands.

In the rearview mirror, Adam caught Blue’s eyes, and she gave him a smile so full of warmth that he tightened his grip.

It was still pouring with rain by the time they made it back to Henrietta and, once Blue was dropped off to a chorus of _It’s so late!_ from Maura and Calla, Ronan drove to Monmouth.

“I don’t mean to state the obvious,” Adam said, “but are you not going to drop me home? Is your backseat any good for sleeping?”

“Don’t be a dick,” Ronan said. “Gansey, Noah—out. Fuck off.”

Gansey’s eyebrows furrowed in amusement. “What are you—”

Ronan did not look at any of them when he said, “I’m staying the night at Adam’s. Don’t make me say it again.”

“Don’t I get a say in this?” Adam asked.

“Alright, Parrish,” Ronan said, lips twisted into a smirk, “can I stay at yours tonight?”

“Yeah, you can,” Adam said.

“Gross,” Noah said, but he was smiling as he faded out of the car and appeared again at Monmouth’s front door.

That just left Gansey. He leant forward, an arm on each seat. “You two,” he said. He looked like he was going to say something else, but then he smiled and shook his head. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“See you,” Adam said, at the same time as Ronan said, “Don’t count on it.”

Adam waited until Gansey closed the door to Monmouth behind him to speak again. “You’re impossible.”

Ronan didn’t smile. He closed his eyes and tipped his head back, blowing a breath out through his lips. He had let go of Adam’s hand some time ago—probably he needed both for driving more than he would ever let on—but there was a closeness between them, now, that might never go away. That sent thrills through Adam in a way he had never known possible.

“Forget it,” Ronan said. “Let’s go back to yours.”

“I wonder how well you’ll fit into my bed,” Adam mused, although he knew the answer: Ronan would fit anywhere he wanted to, because he was Ronan Lynch, unstoppable.

“I can sleep on the floor,” Ronan said, starting up the car again.

Adam shook his head. He wanted to wind down the window and feel the rain on his face, to take hold of this moment and remember it forever.

“But you won’t,” he said.

Ronan smiled—he honest to god smiled, with not a hint of malice—although he didn’t take his eyes off the road ahead. Adam leant back too, and just in case, dropped his hand back off the edge of the seat.

“I won’t,” Ronan agreed.

Outside the car, the rain traced them all the way to St. Agnes. And Ronan followed Adam, told Adam in quiet, unheard tones that he would follow him anywhere—but for now, just up the stairs to Adam’s apartment, out of sight in the fog of the night.

It was better than any dream.

**Author's Note:**

> Please leave a comment and let me know what you thought! I'm brand new to TRC so come chat to me! You can also find me on [twitter](http://twitter.com/_memorde) and [tumblr](http://memordes.tumblr.com).
> 
> Some notes on the Latin:
> 
>   * All translations are my own, so no copyright was infringed in the making of this fic.
>   * Horace's eleventh ode is the source of the famous "carpe diem," but no-one ever mentions that it continues, "quam minimum credula postero," which I've translated colloquially as "because you can't trust tomorrow." I think that makes it mean something a little different.
>   * Catullus is widely regarded as the author of ancient Rome's filthiest surviving poetry. Ronan quotes #16 at the end there, out of context, because it's actually written as a crude insult to some of Catullus' detractors. It's very rude. Ronan is very rude.
> 



End file.
